In early 1969 both guitarist/singer Eric Clapton and multi-instrumentalist/singer Steve Winwood each were emerging from popular English bands Cream and Traffic, respectively as stars in their own right. They formed Blind Faith, released a studio album, mounted a sole US tour marred by problems on and off the stage and, after only seven months, broke up. Nevertheless, rock music writers have carried the torch for that long ago pairing of Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood ever since, keeping the memory of that musical unicorn alive as much for its promise of what might have been. Concertgoers to Clapton’s 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago got a thrilling glimpse of that potential when Steve Winwood accepted Clapton’s invitation to perform together, and the response was immediate. The duo decided to stage three nights in February the following year, and the reunion for which intrepid rock fans had longed for forty years became reality when Eric Clapton joined Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Fans of the fleeting one-off Blind Faith album were rewarded with muscular, time-tested versions of “Had to Cry Today”,”Presence of the Lord”, and “Can’t Find My Way Home” as well as some of the best of Traffic, Derek and the Dominos, and Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood solo catalogs! Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood guest here In the Studio. –Redbeard
Tag: Steve Winwood
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Traffic- John Barleycorn Must Die- Steve Winwood, the late Jim Capaldi
The love and affection between my guests Steve Winwood and the late Jim Capaldi are clearly on display in our classic rock interview exploring one of rock’s most eclectic bands, Traffic, and their fourth studio album in July 1970 John Barleycorn Must Die. The line-up from which came the legendary first Traffic albums Mr Fantasy and Traffic included Dave Mason, but for John Barleycorn Must Die former Spencer Davis Group teen prodigy singer/organist/guitarist Steve Winwood, reed man Chris Wood, and drummer Jim Capaldi would form the trinity responsible for Traffic’s highest charting album at #5 on Billboard.Contrary to what their publicists would have you believe, bands rarely break up over “musical differences”. Of course the band members must share enough musical common ground to establish and sustain a creative dialogue, but equally importantly (crucially actually) is that the personalities in a band such as England’s Traffic must complement one another, not unlike a successful marriage but to multiple people. So try to imagine being in multiple simultaneous marriages and you’ll get an idea of the dynamics involved in a band. Guitarist/singer Dave Mason, a former Spencer Davis Group roadie, shared a talent for melody with the other three on the first two Traffic albums but little else personality-wise, and was cut loose for the second and final time before the second album hit store shelves.
Meanwhile Mssrs.Winwood, Capaldi, and Wood incorporated such diverse musical influences as Memphis soul, old English folk, light psychedelia, Latin rhythms, and unapologetic jazz. Traffic was delivering World Music decades before the term was coined. Steve Winwood even reveals in this classic rock interview that Traffic, never a band for pop hits nor the 3-minute format, may have actually been among the first “jam bands”. Curiously they placed no album on Rolling Stone magazine’s original “Top 500 Albums of All Time” list, yet were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame not more than a year before Jim Capaldi’s January 2005 death from stomach cancer (Chris Wood passed away in 1983 from liver failure). -Redbeard
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Traffic- Low Spark of High Heeled Boys- Steve Winwood,the late Jim Capaldi
Not necessarily considered a Progressive Rock band, nevertheless the title song to Traffic’s most popular album, November 1971’s Low Spark of High Heeled Boys , fits easily high atop any list of the most popular and creative songs of the Progressive Rock era. Yet that song, and the Low Spark… album in general, are considerably different from Traffic’s preceding 1970 album, John Barleycorn Must Die.First off, up until Low Spark… Traffic had been perceived (at least by rock critics anyway) as a vehicle for Steve Winwood, but now the creative core of the band was clearly revealed to be equal parts Winwood, woodwind/electronics pioneer Chris Wood, and percussionist/singer/songwriter Jim Capaldi, the latter of whom contributed vocals to “Rock and Roll Stew“ and the whimsical “Light Up or Leave Me Alone“.
(L to R: Chris Wood, Rick Grech, Jim Gordon,Reebop, Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood)
Winwood and Capaldi turned in the winsome “Many a Mile to Freedom“ and the album centerpiece title song, but it was the late Chris Wood who would transform it into a hypnotic, electronic, sax-fueled epic. In my classic rock interview In the Studio prior to Jim Capaldi’s death in 2005 from cancer, it is clearly evident how much Steve Winwood and Capaldi loved Wood, and each other. – Redbeard
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Steve Winwood- Back in the High Life 40th Anniversary
He already had Hall of Fame bona fides as one of the penultimate “band guys” in the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and Blind Faith, and through the Seventies and early Eighties Steve Winwood had released occasional solo albums, all critically received if not hugely popular. But that last part changed in a big way with the June 1986 release of Back in the High Life , which saw Steve’s blue-eyed soul voice, organ, and guitar mated beautifully with co-writer Will Jennings on multi-platinum hits “Higher Love”,’Freedom Overspill”,”The Finer Things”, and “Back in the High Life Again”. Steve Winwood joins me here In the Studio.By his mid-twenties, Steve Winwood indeed was on a hall of fame career pace, singing and playing hits as a mere teenager with the Spencer Davis Group (“Gimme Some Lovin’ “,” I’m a Man”), Traffic, and Blind Faith. Yet Winwood told me in this classic rock interview about 1986’s Back in the High Life that a 1972 bout with peritonitis almost killed him, and the sobering realization of the fragility of his own life, and the lengthy recuperation back to health, had a profound impact on Steve Winwood’s personal, spiritual, and musical life ever since. There is no better example of that fact than “Higher Love”, the #1 seller and winner of both the “Record of the Year” and “Song of the Year” Grammys for 1986.”Higher Love” isn’t about doing it in the top bunk . It’s about love on a spiritual plane, not an airplane, and even though the lyrics were penned by Texas Oscar-winner Will Jennings (Winwood’s “While You See a Chance”; “Up Where We Belong” for Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warren; Eric Clapton‘s “Tears in Heaven”; Titanic theme “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion), Steve Winwood shares In The Studio that the spiritual themes expressed in “Higher Love” are those by which he has tried to live ever since the near-fatal illness.
There are some very high profile musical guests on Back in the High Life : the distinctive ever-young voice of James Taylor is heard clearly on the album’s title song, and talk about distinctive? The unmistakable slide guitar of the incomparable Joe Walsh really pumps up two of the rockers here, “Freedom Overspill” and “Split Decision”-Redbeard
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Steve Winwood – Why Can’t We Live Together?
Back in 1972 while working at my first radio station in Ohio, I got a lesson in soul music from Timmy Thomas and the single “Why Can’t We Live Together?“, and apparently an ocean away Steve Winwood, ex-Spencer Davis Group wunderkind, Traffic cop, and Blind Faith refugee, was taking the same musical correspondence course. What we both heard was Thomas’ sweet soul voice scatting atop warm currents and eddies of Hammond organ chords, then suddenly punctuated by the funkiest one note solo in recorded history! And only Steve Winwood could possibly emulate the original. –Redbeard
